http://www.exxonmobil.com/Apps/RefiningTechnologies/files/sellsheet_09_mtg_brochure.pdf
We have often, in the course of our reportage on the very real technologies which exist, technologies that enable the conversion of our abundant Coal into liquid transportation fuels, made reference to ExxonMobil's "MTG"(r), methanol-to-gasoline, technology; wherein the Methanol is posited to be made from Coal.
Herein, from ExxonMobil themselves, we present full, graphic explanation of their "Methanol to Gasoline", or "MTG"(r) technology, which has already been, as we have earlier documented, reduced to practice in other places of the world; and, which ExxonMobil headlines, in their own presentation, as:
"Methanol to Gasoline (MTG): Production of Clean Gasoline from Coal
So Advanced, Yet So Simple"
"High energy prices and volatility in 2008 have helped to spur worldwide interest in finding and developing additional sources of energy to meet increasing demand. Coal is expected to play a key role as an energy source in the rapidly growing economy in countries such as China, India and even the United States, in
the coming decades, despite its higher CO2 intensity. To meet the need to increase supply while protecting the environment, continued technology advances will be needed. One such consideration is the conversion of coal into high quality, clean-burning transportation fuel."
(So, from the quintessential Big Oil company, we have public admission that Coal can be converted "into high quality, clean-burning transportation fuel".)
"There are two commercially demonstrated routes for converting coal to transportation fuels through gasification ... . The first is the widely known Fischer-Tropsch process, discovered in the 1920’s. It has been commercially practiced in several different forms to produce fuels from either coal or natural gas.
Less known, is another commercially proven alternative for converting coal to gasoline through methanol.
ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company’s (EMRE) Methanol-to-Gasoline (MTG) process converts coal to high quality clean gasoline when coupled with commercially proven coal gasification and methanol synthesis technology."
(Note that they speak only of indirect Coal conversion processes that have been commercially demonstrated and "commercially proven". There are others. And, there are other, direct Coal conversion technologies, such as WVU's "West Virginia Process", which have, as far as we know, not yet been reduced to commercial practice.)
"Both the Fisher-Tropsch and MTG processes convert coal into synthesis gas before converting it to the final liquid products. However, their respective product slates are very different. The Fisher-Tropsch process produces a broad spectrum of straight-chain paraffinic hydrocarbons that requires upgrading to produce commercial quality gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. In contrast, MTG selectively converts methanol to one liquid
product: a very low sulfur, low benzene regular octane gasoline."
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We close our excerpts here, though the full presentation is worth a thorough look by anyone genuinely interested in the fact, seemingly unbeknownst to the common citizens of US Coal Country, that multiple processes exist, some of them commercialized elsewhere in the world, which enable the conversion of Coal, according to the oil industry's own reigning giant, into Methanol, and, through that industrially-valuable Methanol, into "commercial quality ... jet fuel and diesel" and "very low sulfur, low benzene regular octane gasoline".